Up To My Eyeballs

The reaction to last months redesign has been mostly positive – to which I thank you all. It is amazing the opportunities that having a “nice website” can bring. Since the launch, I’ve had a number of offers thrown my way, which I am obviously very happy about. These have included (but not limited to)

Blog Designs

An Oil & Gas Industry portal (as if I didn’t do enough of these at work!)

Some interface design consulting work

Helping out on couple of really interesting web apps

It’s a lot of stuff to come from a simple redesign!

Not Enough Hours in the Day

The sad fact is that I simply don’t have the time to do all the projects that come through. It’s a weird feeling having to turn down work. It’s also unfortunate that I’m not quite reaching the level of work/extra income that I’d need to go freelance full-time – otherwise I’d have a lot more time to devote to client projects!

That’s not to say I don’t want people to offer me more work – quite the opposite! If you feel there is something I can help you with, please get in touch!

Keeping a Balance

One thing that I constantly struggle to do is keep a healthy balance between work, freelancing and home life. Spending 8 hours a day at the office then coming home to do “other” work doesn’t lead to a happy family. Coming home and spending all my time with my family doesn’t make for happy clients. It’s a battle, and one I guess many others go through.

New Ventures & Old

With all the client work coming through, it can be easy to forget about your own projects. As always, I have a few of these on the burner.

XRT version 2 is coming. I have refined a lot of the functions so it is a lot faster than before. It also ties in a lot more closely with Textpattern. There are still a few bugs to iron out, but I’d hope to have something ready in a month or so.

I also have a couple of domains that I’d like to develop into sites. One is totally nerdish and very, very niche. My inner geek-child totally wants to get it finished. Another site was meant to launch at the end of April, but my co-developer pulled out, putting that project on ice. Bastard (he knows I love him really!). Maybe by the end of the year, my little empire will reveal itself.

Back to Work

So that’s my little update for now. I’d like to close by quickly thanking all those that applied for the designer gig for sending in your details. You should hear from us by the end of the month.